Sleep is a magic thing that I don’t think we have enough gratitude for. Our bodies use the time we are sleeping to do major processing. We replenish our tissues, soothe our nervous system, manufacture new fluids and chemicals in order to recharge our organs, focus on healing areas that have become damaged such as skin or muscle and so much more. We put reactive external facing processes on hold and go within to focus on ourselves and become more ourselves in that action than we are throughout our waking lives.
Emotionally, we lay down our need for masks and roles, letting ourselves process our feelings from the events of the day and in healing our body, removing excess stimuli that can encourage over reaction or emotional response out of sync with events. We allow ourselves to feel what we truly feel about events, people and situations in a healthy way and learn about our true natures, waking with clarity or at least more certainty about how we feel.
Mentally we process the events of the day parsing out meaning from random events and giving ourselves clues on what we want and need for the future. The fun part of this is we rarely think in bullet point memos about things. Rather we think in symbols, in patterns, in events which tell us a great deal more in one action than we could get from a bunch of linear words. However we have to work to extract the true and full meaning, which can take the fun out if it.
And Spiritually we are able to release ourselves from the healing body for a time and wander. We goto the Akashics for further learning or healing, we goto help others in their journey through life, we visit those we have left behind or that concern us greatly, checking to see that they are all right.
Sleep is an amazing thing and not a waste of productive time. Make sure you get enough of it and when you do, notice what happens. You’ll be surprised, I promise.